Until the 1970's, Campbell County was primarily agricultural. The County experience a large growth from homesteading during and after World War I. Many of the small homesteads survived until taken over for coal reserves in the 1970's. Coal has been important in the Powder River region since prior to the coming of Europeans. Natural outcropping occur in the area which were utilized by Indians. In 1920, the Peerless Mine opened as an underground mine. In the 1970's, the coal industry expanded, as a result of the need for Wyoming's low sulphur coal, to the point that Campbell County now provides in excess of one-fifth of all coal mined in the United States. Additionally, the area is now involved with the production of coal methane gas.

Minerals in Campbell County

Early homesteaders found deposits of coal close to the surface. This provided an inexpensive fuel for them to use in heating their homes. Starting in 1909, small mines were built around the county. The first major coal mine in Campbell County was Wyodak, east of Gillette. This was the first surface mine in the west, and the coal seam at Wyodak averages 80 feet thick. This mine continues to produce coal for the nearby power plant. Campbell County contains more coal than any other county in Wyoming. This coal has a very low sulfur content, and is clean burning. Increased concerns about air pollution in the United States encouraged the mining of Campbell County’s low sulfur coal. During the 1970s coal companies planned and built large surface mines in Campbell County. Most of the coal produced in the County is shipped by train to coal-fired power plants in the Midwest. The increased coal production in Campbell County caused the railroad to build 116 miles of new track in the 1970s. In 1984, the Chicago Northwestern Railroad began serving southern Campbell County coal mines.

In 1999, Campbell County produced 316.9 million tons of coal. The state total for 1999 was 334 million.

The first oil explorations began in the 1940s. Although the first wells were dry, the constant visitations of geologists and their crews suggested that oil and gas would soon be found in Campbell County. The first commercial oil field discovery was made in 1948. Oil discoveries near the Crook County line in 1956 touched off the first oil boom. Other major oil and gas discoveries were made in the 1960s and 1970s at Belle Creek, Hilite, and Harzog. In 1983, 21,000,000 barrels of oil were pro- duced in Campbell County. Campbell County is the second largest producer of oil in the state. Some of Campbell County’s oil is piped to refineries in Casper and Newcastle. There the oil is changed into gasoline and oil for your car and fuel oil for heating homes and buildings.

In 1969, a total of 758 oil wells were drilled. Four hundred thirteen were producing wells.

Gas is also produced in Campbell County. Most gas produced in Campbell County is piped south to Colorado and east to Nebraska. Most of the gas is used to heat homes and other buildings. Production of coal bed methane began in the late 1990s. Coal bed methane originates in coal beds and is recovered before the coal is taken from the ground. It is estimated that there will be over 100,000 methane gas wells in Northeast Wyoming by the year 2010. The importance of minerals in Campbell County has been increasing over the last 30 years. Campbell County now leads the state in assessed mineral valuation. The 1983 production of oil, gas, and coal was valued at $1,313,619,608.

Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves; coal is mined in over 100 countries, and on all continents except Antarctica. The largest reserves are found in the USA, Russia, Australia, China, India and South Africa.

Note the table below.
Proved recoverable coal reserves at end-2006 (million tonnes (teragrams))[30] Country ↓ Bituminous & anthracite ↓ SubBituminous & lignite ↓ TOTAL ↓ Share ↓
United States of America 111,338 135,305 246,643 27.1
Russia 49,088 107,922 157,010 17.3
China 62,200 52,300 114,500 12.6
India 90,085 2,360 92,445 10.2
Australia 38,600 39,900 78,500 8.6
South Africa 48,750 0 48,750 5.4
Ukraine 16,274 17,879 34,153 3.8
Kazakhstan 28,151 3,128 31,279 3.4
Poland 14,000 0 14,000 1.5
Brazil 0 10,113 10,113 1.1
Germany 183 6,556 6,739 0.7
Colombia 6,230 381 6,611 0.7
Canada 3,471 3,107 6,578 0.7
Czech Republic 2,094 3,458 5,552 0.6
Indonesia 740 4,228 4,968 0.5
Turkey 278 3,908 4,186 0.5
Greece 0 3,900 3,900 0.4
Hungary 198 3,159 3,357 0.4
Pakistan 0 3,050 3,050 0.3
Bulgaria 4 2,183 2,187 0.2
Thailand 0 1,354 1,354 0.1
North Korea 300 300 600 0.1
New Zealand 33 538 571 0.1
Spain 200 330 530 0.1
Zimbabwe 502 0 502 0.1
Romania 22 472 494 0.1
Venezuela 479 0 479 0.1
TOTAL 478,771 430,293 909,064 100.0

[edit] Major coal producers
Production of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)[30] Country ↓ 2003 ↓ 2004 ↓ 2005 ↓ 2006 ↓
PR China 1722.0 1992.3 2204.7 2380.0
United States 972.3 1008.9 1026.5 1053.6
India 375.4 407.7 428.4 447.3
Australia 351.5 366.1 378.8 373.8
Russian Federation 276.7 281.7 298.5 309.2
South Africa 237.9 243.4 244.4 256.9
Germany 204.9 207.8 202.8 197.2
Indonesia 114.3 132.4 146.9 195.0
Poland 163.8 162.4 159.5 156.1
Total World 5187.6 5585.3 5886.7 6195.1

 Major coal exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tons)[Country
Australia 238.1 247.6 257.6
United States 43.0 48.0 49.9
South Africa 78.7 74.9 77.5
CIS (Former Soviet Union 41.0 55.7 62.3
Poland 16.4 16.3 16.4

Canada 27.7 28.8 31.0
China 103.4 95.5 79.0
South America 57.8 65.9 68.8
Indonesia 107.8 131.4 147.6
Vietnam N/A 10.3 14.1
Total 713.9 764.0 804.2

Sub-bituminous coal is a type of coal whose properties range from those of lignite to those of bituminous coal and are used primarily as fuel for steam-electric power generation.

Sub-bituminous coal may be dull, dark brown to black, soft and crumbly at the lower end of the range, to bright, jet-black, hard, and relatively strong at the upper end. It contains 20-30% inherent moisture by weight. The heat content of sub-bituminous coal ranges from 17 to 24 million British thermal units (Btu) per short ton (20 to 28 megajoules per kilogram) on a moist, mineral-matter-free basis. The heat content of sub-bituminous coal consumed in the United States averages 17 to 18 million Btu per short ton (20 to 21 MJ/kg), on the as-received basis (i.e., containing both inherent moisture and mineral matter). A major source of sub-bituminous coal in the United States is the Powder River Basin in Wyoming.

Its relatively low density and high water content renders some types of sub-bituminous coal susceptible to spontaneous combustion if not packed densely during storage in order to exclude free air flow.
 Coal
Bituminous coal is a relatively soft coal containing a tarlike substance called bitumen. It is of higher quality than lignite coal but poorer quality than anthracite coal.

Bituminous coal is an organic sedimentary rock formed by diagenetic and submetamorphic compression of peat bog material.

Bituminous coal has been compressed and heated so that its primary constituents are the macerals vitrinite, exinite, etc. The carbon content of bituminous coal is around 60-80%; the rest is composed of water, air, hydrogen, and sulfur, which have not been driven off from the minerals.

The heat content of bituminous coal ranges from 21 million to 30 million Btu/ton[vague] (24 to 35 MJ/kg) on a moist, mineral-matter-free basis.

Bituminous coal is usually black, sometimes dark brown, often with well-defined bands of bright and dull material. Bituminous coal seams are stratigraphically identified by the distinctive sequence of bright and dark bands and are classified accordingly as either "dull, bright-banded" or "bright, dull-banded" and so on.

Anthracite (Greek Ανθρακίτης, literally "a type of coal", from Anthrax , coal) is a hard, compact variety of mineral coal that has a high lustre. It has the highest carbon count and contains the fewest impurities of all coals, despite its lower calorific content.

Anthracite coal is the highest of the metamorphic rank, in which the carbon content is between 92% and 98%.[1] The term is applied to those varieties of coal which do not give off tarry or other hydrocarbon vapours when heated below their point of ignition. Anthracite ignites with difficulty and burns with a short, blue, and smokeless flame.

Other terms which refer to anthracite are blue coal, hard coal, stone coal (not to be confused with the German Steinkohle or Dutch steenkool which are broader terms meaning all varieties of coal of a stonelike hardness and appearance, like bituminous coal and often anthracite as well, as opposed to Lignite, which is softer), blind coal (in Scotland), Kilkenny coal (in Ireland), crow coal (or craw coal from its shiny black appearance), and black diamond ("Blue Coal" is the term for a once-popular, specific, trademarked brand of anthracite coal, mined by the Glen Alden Coal Company in Pennsylvania, and sprayed with a blue dye at the mine before shipping to its Northeastern U.S.A. markets to distinguish it from its competitors). The imperfect anthracite of north Devon and north Cornwall (around Bude) in England, which is used as a pigment, is known as culm. Culm is also the term used in geological classification to distinguish the strata in which it is found and similar strata in the Rhenish hill countries are known as the Culm Measures. In America, culm is used as an equivalent for waste or slack in anthracite mining.

The mineral graphite, as with diamond, is one of the allotropes of carbon. It was named by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1789 from the Greek (graphein): "to draw/write", for its use in pencils, where it is commonly called lead, as distinguished from the actual metallic element lead. Unlike diamond, graphite is an electrical conductor, and can be used, for instance, in the electrodes of an arc lamp. Graphite holds the distinction of being the most stable form of carbon under standard conditions. Therefore, it is used in thermochemistry as the standard state for defining the heat of formation of carbon compounds. Graphite may be considered the highest grade of coal, just above anthracite and alternatively called meta-anthracite, although it is not normally used as fuel because it is hard to ignite.

There are three principal types of natural graphite, each occurring in different types of ore deposit: (1) Crystalline flake graphite (or flake graphite for short) occurs as isolated, flat, plate-like particles with hexagonal edges if unbroken and when broken the edges can be irregular or angular; (2) Amorphous graphite occurs as fine particles and is the result of thermal metamorphism of coal, the last stage of coalification, and is sometimes called meta-anthracite. Very fine flake graphite is sometimes called amorphous in the trade; (3) Lump graphite (also called vein graphite) occurs in fissure veins or fractures and appears as massive platy intergrowths of fibrous or acicular crystalline aggregates, and is probably hydrothermal in origin.

The name "graphite fiber" is also sometimes used to refer to carbon fibre or carbon fibre reinforced plastic.

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